


Of Blood Unshed

by CyanideBreathmint



Series: The Fox and the Wolf [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Don't feel sorry for Ren he's a self-radicalized mass-murderer, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Pre-Canon, Snoke Ships It, Spoilers, don't feel sorry for Hux he's an evil space Nazi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 11:53:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5584464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how the walls go up. Every end has a start.</p><div class="center">
  <p>---</p>
</div>Content warning for coercive interrogation techniques, discussion of sexual violence, invasive use of the Force.
            </blockquote>





	Of Blood Unshed

**Author's Note:**

> A shoutout here to altilis, who tackled Kylo Ren training to stop blaster bolts first, in their excellent fic _practice_. My approach of that topic is not an attempt to plagiarize or supersede their work, only an outgrowth of what happened to Kylo Ren in my last fic in this arc, _Burning Heart_. 
> 
> This one starts pretty much the day after the end of _Burning Heart_.
> 
> I am making up names for backwater planets and officers because they’re kind of expendable in the grand scheme of things. 
> 
> I also hereby apologize to PaperKnights because this fic is going to make them cry.

General Hux felt overstretched and underslept and discipline was the only thing that prevented him from showing it. There had been a small meeting with his staff aboard the _Finalizer,_ an hour of strategic planning and review via holoconference with the other officers in High Command and then continued review of the intelligence and interrogation reports from Kylo Ren’s last slightly disastrous foray onto Uanah in search of the Starwalker map. 

Hux had at this point respect and a wary regard for Kylo Ren, and he very much enjoyed his company, but it gave him a headache to think of the time and troops wasted on a search for a very-probably dead old hermit who had vanished off to some swamp or backwater in the puckered arse-end of the galaxy. The First Order had the resources, the ships, the raw numbers to just grind the Republic and their pathetic Resistance into dust, but the Supreme Leader insisted on sending the Knights of Ren out on these expensive errands after Lor San Tekka and with him, the Skywalker map. 

Hux had just swallowed a stimulant capsule when one of his aides entered his office; her usual professionalism dented somewhat by obvious nerves. 

“General Hux, Sir,” Captain Serra said, “Lord Ren –” She was interrupted then, gleam of mask above and behind her shoulder, and Hux could see her trying not to cringe from from Kylo Ren looming over her in too-close proximity.

“I would like to speak with you, General Hux,” Kylo Ren said. Hux knew that he was ignoring advice from Medical, again. Yesterday’s ambush had left Ren too chewed-up to even take his own boots off when all had been said and done, although he probably would have been in better condition if he had let a medic take a look at his injuries in the first place. 

Hux sighed internally and rose from his chair. He had been hoping for his watch to proceed as planned today, but Ren’s presence indicated that plans were not a likely bet at present. “Please, come in, Lord Ren. Thank you, Captain Serra. Dismissed.” 

“Yes, Sir,” Captain Serra stood aside to let Kylo Ren into the room, and then turned briskly around to leave. 

“You should probably still be in bed,” Hux said after the door hissed shut. Ren was wearing something slightly different today – a lightly armored tunic in his usual black showed beneath the coarse fabric of a fresh outer robe, and he still smelled faintly of bacta and disinfectant. 

Kylo Ren sat down without waiting for Hux to seat himself first. “You look like you need to be in bed too,” he said. Servomotors hummed softly, and there was a hiss of disengaging seals as Ren took off his mask and set it on Hux’s desk with a heavy thump, the movements of his right side still stiff. There was a fresh gouge across the faceplate of the mask, one that had not been there before. 

“I appreciate the thought, but I hope you haven’t come to ask me to head to bed in the middle of my watch,” Hux said as he sat back down. As distracting as the idea was, Hux was only aware that he would also have to check the rest of the reports detailing further work done on Starkiller base some time today, and there were not enough hours in his watch for all of it. 

“No,” Ren said, “I want to see the prisoner.” He kept his facial expression largely neutral, but the hints of a smile were all there if you knew what to look for, and Hux did. Dark circles showed about his eyes, and he was still somewhat peaked-looking, no doubt from his recent blood loss. Captain Phasma had reported the trail of smudged, bloody boot prints leading from the hangar bay to Ren’s private quarters. 

“Katra Parrik?” Hux did not need to bring up the files on his console screen – he had just been looking at them. “You read the report, I’m sure. She’s currently in isolation between interrogation sessions.” First Order interrogation processes were fairly complex and involved. A certain amount of physical discomfort was requisite, naturally, but psychological tactics worked just as well and required less cleaning up after. 

Prisoners were kept tightly controlled, the amounts of rest, food, water and light they received adjusted according to their apparent resolve. Interrogation sessions were spaced irregularly and repeated unpredictably until the subjects simply broke, having run out of defenses or things to say other than the truths and secrets they had been trying to hide. 

“I have,” Ren said as he leaned back gingerly in his own chair, looking briefly as though he wasn’t sure where to put his long legs. Hux was aware of Kylo Ren’s iron will and his considerable fortitude, but the signs of his recent injuries were apparent in this close, personal moment. “You also know that I don’t need your permission for any of this.” 

“No, you don’t,” Hux agreed. Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren had always existed outside the official chains of command, ostensibly to serve the Supreme Leader better. It was something Hux found frustratingly irregular no matter how he felt about Ren himself, but then he reminded himself that the irregularity of this arrangement currently had very tangible benefits. “What do you want with her?”

“I only mean to ask Parrik something,” Ren said, his dark eyes half-closed, pensive, almost. His expression seemed thoughtful but Hux knew the manner of Kylo Ren’s questioning well from the reports he had received about the raids he had led, and Hux could sense Ren’s rage straining at the leash.

“I would prefer,” Hux said, knowing the futility of that request, “That she remain well enough for further questioning to take place.” It wasn’t that Hux cared that much about the prisoner, but he already had far too much to do without also fending off complaints from the Intelligence Directorate if Ren damaged Parrik badly like he had the others. 

“I intend to bypass that entire process. You may observe if you wish, General,” Ren stood up, put his mask back on, and then waited by the shut office door, as though Hux had already agreed to watch. Sighing quietly, Hux stood up to follow him. 

He told Captain Serra to tell other visitors that he had urgent business.

\---

Katra Parrik was in remarkably good condition for someone who had survived a fight with Kylo Ren, considering that she still owned all her limbs, faculties and internal organs. She had already begun to crack, according to the reports Hux had received, but further interrogations were still scheduled in order to test the consistency of her story and the value of the intelligence. She was not a high-value prisoner in any case, having been one of the partisans who had decided foolishly to aid the Resistance in its subversive actions.

She had already been moved from a cell to an interrogation room by the time Hux had reached the security block aboard the _Finalizer,_ that no doubt done on Kylo Ren’s orders. He wondered about why Ren had even bothered discussing the matter with him in the first place if he had been so bent on bypassing official command in the first place. Then he wondered about the soft, veiled murder in Ren’s voice, before, and wondered if there was to be a lesson for him in this exercise. 

Parrik was lying still and resigned in the interrogation chair when they entered the room. Her good eye widened at the sight of Kylo Ren, and Hux watched as some of the color left her face under the layers of ash and dirt that had caked her skin. 

Ren did not speak. He only crossed the floor to stand just by the interrogation chair she had been shackled in, close enough to touch but not touching her. Hux simply crossed to the other side of Parrik, flanking her according to the protocol he observed whenever he sat in on interrogation sessions. 

“You,” she whispered dryly, looking at Kylo Ren, “What more do you want from me?”

Ren did not say anything. He simply pulled a disposable cup from a holder by the room’s clean-up sink, filled it with water, and then held it gently to her mouth, mindful of her split lip. She hesitated for a moment, and then turned her face away from him. 

“You might as well drink,” Ren told her, “I need you to be able to talk when I begin.” His voice was low and controlled, but Hux knew him well enough to know that things were going to become very unpleasant for Parrik very shortly.

Parrik tried to work up the saliva to say something in reply, failed, and then sipped briefly from the cup Ren held still to her lips. He tipped the cup carefully as she drank, and then pulled it away when it looked like she was done. 

“I’ve told you everything I know already,” she said softly after she had swallowed some water, “You’ve killed everybody. Everyone. There isn’t anything left.”

“No,” Ren said, his voice still calm and even. Too even, in fact. “Most of your friends and family were still alive until the explosives went off. You, or one of your co-conspirators detonated those bombs in a bid to assassinate me.” 

Parrik shut her eyes, and Hux could see fresh tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes to soak into matted dark hair. “I didn’t have the detonator,” she whispered at length. “None of us did. Why are you here? Why don’t you just kill me already?” 

“Because there is still more I would like to know,” Ren said. He held the water to her lips one more time, took the cup away and dropped it on the floor when she refused it again. Water splashed and the waxed paper cup crunched softly under the heel of his boot. “I know you know more than you’ve given us.”

“I told you already. I don’t know anything more. And – what are you doing here?” she asked Hux, her eyes widening briefly as she noticed him seemingly for the first time since he had entered the room. “Those are general’s stripes. Are you here to watch? Do you enjoy it? I’ve heard about the things you people do. You’re just going to rape me, aren’t you?”

Hux sighed heavily and rolled his eyes ceiling-ward, finally provoked into speaking. “Yes, and I skewer babies on a roasting spit and eat their tender flesh with a cocktail made from the tears of innocent orphans. Is there _anything_ you people won’t believe about the First Order?” In all honesty Hux did not care what happened to her as long as he got the information he needed, but that accusation had stung his sense of professionalism. Besides, his lack of a social life notwithstanding, Hux was in no way pathetic enough to need to resort to exploiting prisoners, and it annoyed him irrationally that she held such a low opinion of him. “Is there a point in this banter, Lord Ren?” he asked at last, impatient. “Please hurry this up.” 

“Certainly, General Hux,” Ren said, and Hux wished, not for the first time, that he could see through his mask, because Ren sounded as though he had been enjoying Hux’s annoyance far too much in that moment. “Katra Parrik,” Ren said, and this was more like it, his voice now heavy with menace, “I need to know about that ambush you planned. I want to know what the spies knew. I want to know if your so-called General Organa sanctioned this assassination.” 

“Please,” Parrik said, trembling as Kylo Ren held his open hand closely above her head, as though to caress her cheek. “I don’t know.” 

“That’s what you have been saying,” Ren said, his fingers flexing within his glove, “but I can sense the truth of it. You know more.” 

Hux felt a strangeness in the air, a sensation that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and there was a sudden dull heaviness in his head like that experienced when the air pressure in a ship changed due to something like an insufficient seal in an airlock or a failing bulkhead. 

Hux had spent enough time on ships and in shipboard drills to associate that feeling with imminent danger, and that reflex did not help when the Parrik woman started whimpering softly. She had started to rise up in the interrogation chair, her head tipping up and forward in the direction of Kylo Ren’s hand as though a great magnet dragged at the iron in her blood. “Tell me,” Ren growled, and then she started to scream as her neck and shoulders reached the limits of their articulation. 

_Impressive_ , Hux thought, even as he also weighed the possibility of Ren using this ability on him. Parrik did not stop screaming as Kylo Ren tore the thoughts out of her mind; not once in the several minutes it took for her to lose consciousness.

\---

Neither Hux nor Ren said anything to each other when the interrogation was over, and it was only in the relative privacy of a long elevator ride away from the security block that Kylo Ren spoke.

“Pathetic,” Ren said, his voice low and charged with rage, “Those fools don’t even know how to plan an ambush. They haven’t even considered trying to assassinate me.” Most people would have been relieved to not be the objects of assassination plots, but Kylo Ren was, as Hux already knew, not most people.

“Was that all that you wanted to know from Parrik?” Hux asked, genuinely annoyed that Ren had disrupted his schedule and normal interrogation procedure for such a trivial answer. “She would probably have told us all that sooner or later in the interrogation process.” 

Ren growled and reached out with the Force to grasp Hux by the neck. The limited room in the elevator meant that his fingertips were mere centimeters away in any event. “I needed to know now, ” he said. Ren’s grip was firm but not crushing, and then the weight dissipated as he reached out and closed his gloved fingers around Hux’s neck in a brief caress. 

Hux did not grant Ren the satisfaction of watching him flinch internally, but he smiled briefly as the supple glove leather touched his skin, and then more broadly when he followed Ren’s gaze downward to the blaster he was holding, its muzzle rested ever-so-lightly above Ren’s heart. Hux’s finger lay lightly on the trigger, signaling his obvious intention to fire if things did start getting out of hand. He did not holster his sidearm until Ren let go of him.

And then Kylo Ren was withdrawing into himself again, all stiffness and rage banked like ash-covered embers like the time they had first spoken to one another, as the elevator doors started to open. “I will see you later, General,” Ren said, the words somewhere between promise and threat, and Hux had only nodded as though he had already planned the meeting as Ren vanished behind the closing doors.

\---

Several hours had passed before Hux managed to finish his work for the day. In that time he had received and read two dozen more reports, delivered a briefing to several subordinates, received one in holoconference with the Supreme Leader, checked and filled out the small sheaf of paperwork that required his approval and signature, stood his requisite four hours’ watch on the bridge and also missed his own lunch. It was about an hour past the end of his watch, and he was tired, hungry, and more than a little put out, especially because he had received notifications that Kylo Ren had barricaded himself in one of the briefing rooms and not let anyone else in. Those same complaints had also described the sound of blaster fire in the room, which left Hux vaguely optimistic that Ren had not simply destroyed most of the room’s interior with his lightsaber as he had done with several rooms, several other times before.

Hux thought of simply returning to his quarters and spending a quiet evening over a private dinner, to rest at least until Kylo Ren saw fit to grace the threshold of his anteroom (and, perhaps, his bed) later this evening, but then he thought again of strong gloved fingers about his neck, thumb gently brushing the edge of his jaw, and he sighed softly to himself and took an elevator down from his office. His vague optimism, Hux thought, would one day be the death of him. 

The door was locked, as usual, and Hux overrode the door’s locks with his own security codes, also as usual. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when the door hissed open, but the sight of Ren sitting in one of the chairs at one end of the room was something of a relief. Still masked and cowled, he twirled an infantry-issue blaster in his right hand and then raised it to fire smoothly at the singed conference table propped up against the far wall like a makeshift target. The bolt of plasma flashed, popped and then sizzled on the pitted surface of the abused table. 

The doors hissed quietly shut behind Hux, and he let the locks reengage, a tiny beep that promised privacy, security, before he spoke to Ren. “We have a range, you know, Lord Ren. Several, in fact.” 

“Quiet,” Ren said, as he raised the blaster to fire again. Hux would not have obeyed Ren except for the great concentration he saw in the set of Ren’s shoulders, the careful movements of his hands. He fired again, and this time, Hux managed to see it. At first he thought that he was overtired, and his vision had begun to blur, but there it was, the deforming bolt of plasma pooling into a small, melted crater in the plastic of the tabletop, frozen in place. 

Hux blinked hard, but the bolt was still there, caught in the exact moment it had contacted the improvised target. “You’re learning to slow blaster bolts,” he said. It was not a question. 

Ren nodded, let out a brief, tired sigh that came out as a hiss through the vocoders of his mask. “I’ll need a bigger room.” 

“Tomorrow,” Hux said, reaching briefly out to trace a fingertip against the fresh gouge on the front of Ren’s mask, his touch as light as when he had traced the raised welts on Ren’s back from the scourge, ridged weals in crisscrossing lines like stitches made in a crude attempt to sew an errant shadow back on. 

Ren quivered ever so slightly at the touch, as though Hux had been touching his bare face instead of the mask. “Tomorrow,” he agreed. 

They left the room together, and behind them the tiny suspended remnant of plasma burst and dissipated in the room’s fading lights as the doors hissed shut behind them.

\---

Hux was exhausted after his long day, too tired to contemplate anything but a quick meal, a shower and bed, all of these in quick succession as his main activities for the evening. Ren’s presence hinted otherwise, however, and Hux started to wonder about the feasibility of tying Ren up and sticking him in the closet, at least until next morning. Those thoughts mingled with sane ones about not wanting his quarters destroyed, and the even saner ones about preserving his own anatomical integrity for the near future.

It was not until Ren sat down at the edge of Hux’s bed and took off his mask that he realized how pale he still looked under it and how those dark circles lent him a hollow, pinched look. Ren was feeling as tired as he was, likely worse from his still-healing injuries. The heavy helmet sank into the mattress as Ren dropped it beside him, and then started to work at his boots, moving with the same stiffness and limited range of motion that Hux had noticed earlier in the day. 

“You probably should have stayed in bed,” Hux said as Ren managed to pull off his right boot, and then crossed the floor to stand closer to him before he could tug off the left. 

“There was something I needed to know,” Ren said, and the tone of his voice brooked no argument as Hux helped him with his left boot. Ren stretched his feet slowly, kicked his legs out carelessly as Hux dropped the second boot onto the floor and then sagged, rested his head heavily on Hux’s chest, ear pressed to the rise and fall of Hux’s diaphragm. Hux leaned in against Ren’s weight and the grip of those arms around his waist, and then reached down to stroke at Ren’s dark, slightly tangled fleece of hair with gloved hands. 

“I’m tired,” Hux heard Ren whisper softly, the words spreading warm through his layers of uniform jacket and shirt and undershirt, breath brushing third-hand against his skin in a tiny flush of warmth. 

_So am I_ , Hux wanted to say but he thought back to his youth in Academy, to the less-good memories, (the ones he tamped down hard in his head so he wouldn’t have to lie awake and see his failures and humiliations flashing repeatedly across the back of his skull like a jittery holoprojection in the middle of the night).

In that moment Hux sensed Kylo Ren’s deep fear and loneliness, that starved-child hunger that yearned for some kind of warmth and comfort underneath all the rage and petulance and power, and he felt suddenly his own emptiness mirroring it. He would not look at his own inadequacy, refused to own and rear it, but it was there sounding against his sense of self like a hollow spot in a poured synstone wall. _If he sees my weakness,_ Hux thought then, _he will use it._ And then he reached down very gently, and pushed Ren’s head away from his chest, held his shoulders instead and stared into those dark-dark eyes. 

Something tugged, stretched taut between them, and then gave with a tiny twinge of pain in that very instant as Hux let go of Ren and sat down wordlessly beside him on the bed. He tasted salt in the back of his mouth as he tugged off his own boots, and was confused until he realized that he had been trying to hold back tears. He could not remember the last time he had cried, and would not, in fact, cry today.

Instead, he shifted and turned slightly to better face Ren, who tipped his pointed chin upward as Hux kissed him gently on the mouth, jaw, that pale sliver of neck above the high collar of his inner robe. Ren’s mouth was hot and soft, sweet spit and subtle salt, and Hux embraced the sharpness of his teeth and the scratch of stubble against his lips, nipped gently at Ren’s ear, all his hungers forgotten save for one. Desire bloomed somewhere beneath his heart and thrummed within as Ren reached up and closed his fingers in Hux’s hair, and the slight pain in his scalp excited him, elicited a cool tingle down his spine. 

This pain, the bruising crush of teeth on his neck, the sharp sting of Ren’s short sharp fingernails scrabbling desperately at his back and shoulders, this was a covenant; a promise of pleasure and a kind of refuge from the weight of command and expectation, the crushing, suffocating weight that Hux didn’t even know he had been carrying since he had been a very little child mimicking his father’s salutes so very long ago. 

This was a kind of oblivion like the kind many sought in the bottom of a bottle, one that was no less deadly in its own slow insidious way. Hux welcomed it, numbed himself, lost himself in the sensory overload that was Kylo Ren, the smell and touch and taste of him, soft tangle of hair brushing against his face, whipcord toughness pinned gently beneath him, bony wrists hard under the palms of his hands. Ren growled briefly, freed his left hand from Hux’s grip and seized him by the collar of his uniform jacket, a fierceness that made him chuckle and then gasp for air against Ren’s mouth, all heat and hunger and velvety tongue. Ren kissed like a drowning man and each kiss felt to Hux as though his breath and life were being swallowed to fuel Ren, to keep him from drowning in the crashing waves of his raging soul. 

_Drowning like this is fine for me,_ Hux thought as he started to undress Ren. Hux worked by touch, his fingers working the now-familiar fasteners on Ren’s outer robe. Ren let go of Hux’s hair, reached down himself to unbuckle the broad leather belt about his waist. Hux fumbled briefly at the unfamiliar gambeson Ren had been wearing under those outer robes, and then gave up, stopped to unfasten his own jacket and shirt. They were both too weary and hungry for each other for any kind of deliberation and Hux expected Ren to be feverish under his layers of clothing. His skin was cool, slightly clammy instead, and Hux saw the stained bandages on his chest and side, wrapped around his upper arm, remembered to be gentler with him then. 

Ren was always tense and taut except when he was sleeping and this time was no different as Hux leaned back into him and kissed him on the soft vulnerable spot under his jaw, let his mouth linger on the bump of his larynx. That tension increased as Hux worked his way downward to kiss and suck on Ren’s nipples, tender flesh shivering erect under the tip of his tongue, and he could feel the goose bumps rising in ripples on Ren’s pale skin under his lips and hands. Ren groaned softly, impatiently, and then guided Hux’s left hand further downwards onto the shaft of his cock. He hissed, sharp intake of breath as Hux began to stroke him gently at first, and then reached up to grasp the pillow beneath his head, arched his back and thrust his hips upward against that sweet friction. 

Hux ventured yet lower with his attentions, kissing his way down Ren’s sternum to linger over the hard muscle of his lean belly, his favorite spot that tender vulnerability just above the tangle of Ren’s pubic hair where muscle started to give way to softer flesh. He thought, oddly, of how he had once learned how wild canids hunted, of their paintspatter coat patterns and their tendency to disembowel prey instead of going for the throat, and that too was fine with him as he clutched at Ren’s skinny hips, the shallow curve of his ass with his free hand. 

Ren broke first in their standoff in their tiny personal war of pleasure and desire, giving and taking. His voice cracked just a little bit as he gasped, “Hux – just stop fucking around down there and _fuck me,_ ” and the desperation in his voice sent adrenaline shooting pure and cold through Hux’s veins, made his cock throb and ache from the sheer intensity of his want. 

Hux spread and lubricated Ren quickly, almost mechanically, but he could not help savoring the feeling of him, the slick kiss of muscle and mucous membrane on his fingertips, the way Ren always gasped in surprise as though it were his first time no matter how many times they had done this before. Hux had Ren doubled over as they fucked, nearly bent in half as he propped those long legs against his shoulders, and the heat and softness of him was almost too much for Hux, nearly brought him off with the first two strokes. 

Hux paused to pace himself, took a long breath that filled his head with light against the throbbing of his own pulse in his ears and then grinned as he felt Ren push back up against him, eager. Ren let go of the pillow and shouted wordlessly, closed his long-fingered hands over the headboard instead as Hux started to thrust again, his movements fast and hard. Hux bit down on his own lower lip, tasted the iron of his own blood as he got ever closer to his orgasm as he thrust again and again into the crucible heat of Ren’s asshole, and then Ren was _screaming_ as he tensed up around Hux, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes to mingle with his sweat and soak into his damp, curling hair as he came. Hot spunk spattered Hux’s chest and belly, little drops of heat cooling rapidly against his skin as he managed one more stroke, and then another, and then he was falling, nerves ablaze with white heat as he gasped and came and spent as Ren tensed up around him in the reflexive shudder of his own messy orgasm.

\---

They didn’t need to say anything more to each other afterwards. Hux leaned wearily against Ren as they stood under the blessed heat of the shower, washing spunk and lubricant and dried blood off their skin. They dried off in breathless silence, dressed in the drowning roar of their heartbeats subsiding to a soft whisper in their ears, and spoke only briefly during their dinner and when Hux changed the dressings on Ren’s half-healing injuries.

They tumbled into bed some time after Hux’s usual bedtime, and this time Hux fell asleep almost-instantly, bloodwarm darkness sweeping in like a gentle flood to bear him gently away out to a dreamless sea. 

Hux woke up later that night, jolted awake by a great, unreasonable jag of fear and the sudden sensation of falling. He stared into the darkness above his head afterwards and listened to the soft sound of Ren’s breathing, realized that he too was awake. Without prompting Ren rolled over and slid one arm over Hux’s chest, knotted his long fingers in the half-open placket of Hux’s pyjama shirt before settling down to go back to sleep. Instinctively, Hux reached out for Ren and ran his fingers through his unruly hair until his wrist ached, smoothing it down until Ren’s breathing returned to something closer to the rhythm of sleep. Ren smelled of bacta and disinfectant, fresh new bandages over his arm and flank, and the smell brought Hux back to that first time he had taken care of the cuts and welts across Ren’s back. 

_I need him_ , Hux thought then, _but he needs me too,_ and the sensation brought an odd, coppery freshet of relief that Hux could not adequately explain then, or ever. It didn’t quite quell the taste of salt in his mouth or the vague ache in his chest that he could not name, but it was close enough, and that need was something Hux took hold of and held on to, charred and crushed in his bitter heart until it turned to diamond in the never-silent not-evening of shipboard night.


End file.
